IBM MQ
Transforming ideas into reality
With IBM MQ, your business can gain assured high-performance delivery of data between business systems whilst also being able to make isolated changes within your IT landscape.
World Class Message Orientated Middleware (MOM)
Middleware Messaging
At DeeperThanBlue, we are big fans of messaging. It’s used everywhere in mobile applications to store and forward data between handheld devices and host applications, as well as between trading partners to securely transmit information such as orders, customer data or information about products between parties. There are many other examples which include being the messaging and information backbone between business systems on corporate networks.
What is IBM MQ?
IBM MQ (formerly known as WebSphere MQ and MQSeries) is a robust messaging solution that simplifies and accelerates the integration of different applications across multiple platforms. IBM Websphere MQ facilitates the assured, secure and reliable exchange of information between applications, systems, services and files by sending and receiving message data via messaging queues, thereby simplifying the creation and maintenance of business applications.
It delivers Universal Messaging with a broad set of offerings to meet enterprise-wide messaging needs, as well as providing connectivity for mobile devices MQTT and the ever-growing use case of IoT – Internet of Things computing.
Where is Messaging Used?
Its highly likely that you have touched and used messaging in a number of everyday personal and business situations. These range from:
- requesting a balance or withdrawing money at a cash point/ATM
- using an eCommerce site to order your groceries, cinema tickets, or buy the latest gadget
- the tracking of goods in Logistics that are being delivered
- where an insurance quote is being requested either on-line, over the phone or in a branch
- meter readings for utility supplies such as water, gas, and electric that are automated and provide more accurate bills and feedback to the customer on consumption
- Stock market trades and share price updates that operate at a high velocity and volume
- Travel availability and reservation for hotels, flights and trains.
IBM MQ Capabilities
IBM MQ simplifies connectivity by removing the requirement for application changes to help ensure security and once only delivery of transaction-based messages.
- Once and once only delivery: With IBM MQ, data arrives once, unlike other solutions that can duplicate or lose messages because they have a different quality of service
- Transactional: IBM MQ handles all messages using a transaction, so you can be assured of predictable behaviour even in failure situations
- Asynchronous: If the network or an application becomes unavailable, synchronous solutions will fail. Asynchronous solutions, such as IBM MQ, protect that data and resume its transport when the system becomes available again
- Message encryption: Various solutions offer protection for data at rest. Some only protect the disk, but whereas IBM MQ Advanced protects the message data itself. If the disk is hacked and only the disk is encrypted, everything on that disk is vulnerable. Protection of the messages themselves gives extra peace of mind
IBM MQ is a universal messaging solution. You can run it on premises using software, on an optimised appliance, on a mainframe, or in one cloud or a multi-cloud environment.
From time to time IBM introduces new releases/versions of IBM MQ and withdraws older versions through announcing end of support dates. More information on these can be found on our IBM MQ End of Support page.
How DeeperThanBlue can help with IBM MQ implementation and maintenance
Design & Architect
Implementing best-practice approaches tailored to your specific requirements for IBM MQ installs.
Build & Develop
Development and testing services, utilising agile methodologies to build high-quality software solutions based on IBM MQ solutions.
Health Checks & Performance Reviews (APM)
Ensuring that IBM MQ environments are performing to service levels, and are up to date with application and security fix packs.
Support/AMS
Providing support and managed services offerings for IBM MQ to meet your organisations business requirements and service.
Licence Management
If your IBM MQ licence subscription & support has lapsed we can help you with reinstatement and renew current entitlements.
Our Partners
Here are some of the businesses we have helped with their IBM MQ install.
IBM MQ Case Studies
Need Help? Talk to a specialist at DeeperThanBlue
Get in touchIBM MQ FAQs
What Are The Benefits of IBM MQ?
The key benefits of IBM MQ include:
- Assured delivery of data – IBM MQ is the world leader in making sure data isn’t lost or duplicated when you don’t want it to be. Once-and-only-once message delivery guarantees that messages are not lost or duplicated during transmission, making it ideal for industries like banking and finance where transaction integrity is critical.
- Horizontally scalable – As the workload for a single queue manager increases, it is easy to add more queue managers to share tasks and distribute the messages across them.
Asynchronous messaging – allowing non-time-dependent architecture meaning that applications can send and receive messages regardless of whether they are running simultaneously, improving system flexibility and resilience. - Highly available – MQ ensures that message data is always highly available by giving you ways to replicate that data between systems.
- Cross-platform compatibility – IBM MQ supports a wide range of platforms, including z/OS, IBM i, UNIX, Linux, and Microsoft Windows permitting seamless integration between diverse systems and applications across an enterprise.
- Security and encryption – IBM MQ provides robust security features, including SSL/TLS support for encrypted communication and authentication mechanisms. These features ensure that only authorised applications can access message queues, maintaining data integrity and confidentiality.
- Managed cloud – IBM MQ is available as a cloud-based service called IBM MQ on Cloud. This option allows organisations to leverage the power of IBM MQ without the need to manage the underlying infrastructure, enabling them to focus on application integration rather than system administration.
How Does IBM MQ Work?
IBM MQ operates using the following components:
- Messages: Collections of data meaningful to participating applications
- Queues: Objects that store messages
- Queue Managers: System services that manage message queues and handle data transfer
Messages are placed on queues and transmitted between applications via channels. Queue managers ensure proper message routing, storage, and delivery.
What Tools and Resources Come With IBM MQ?
IBM MQ comes with various tools and resources, including:
- Message editors and browsers – allowing users to view, edit, and manage the content of messages within queues, providing a user-friendly interface for interacting with message data.
- Message management tools – such as prioritising messages, setting time-to-live parameters, and handling dead-letter queues, ensuring efficient message processing.
- MQ administration utilities – facilitating the configuration and management of queue managers, channels, and queues, allowing administrators to monitor system performance and troubleshoot issues effectively.
- Monitoring tools – enabling real-time tracking of message flows, queue depths, and system health metrics, helping organisations maintain optimal performance and quickly identify bottlenecks.
- File transfer and SOAP support – allowing file transfer protocols and SOAP messaging, enabling seamless integration with web services and facilitating the exchange of files between applications across different platforms.
- Log handling utilities – manage log files generated by IBM MQ, so users can configure logging levels, rotate logs, and archive old logs for compliance and auditing purposes.
- Backup tools – helping to ensure data integrity by allowing you to create backups of queue managers and configuration settings, safeguarding against data loss during system failures.
- SSL setup assistance – enabling the simplification of the setup of SSL/TLS for encrypted communication between applications, ensuring that sensitive data remains protected during transmission.
What Industries Benefit From Using IBM Websphere MQ?
IBM MQ is particularly useful for industries with complex IT environments. This includes:
- Banking
- Insurance
- Finance
- Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals
- Telecommunications
- Retail
- Logistics
- Manufacturing & Distribution
Is IBM MQ a Cloud-Based Service?
IBM Websphere MQ can be deployed both on-premises and in the cloud. IBM also offers IBM MQ as a managed service on:
- IBM Cloud
- Amazon AWS
- Microsoft Azure
- Other cloud platforms
IBM MQ as a Service is fully managed and hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is now available through IBM Cloud Pak for Integration on Microsoft Azure marketplace. Two available license price plans are based on runtime compute capacity (the number of virtual processor core hours that are needed) or processor value units (PVUs – a cores rating).
Whilst IBM MQ pricing is provided on both marketplaces this reflects list price. By contacting your friendly business partner, such as DeeperThanBlue, more attractive and volume based pricing can be achieved for both Public clouds and on-premise/private clouds.